turning ships

Harvard Business School has published an interesting interview with Amy Edmondson, a professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit who recently interviewed 190 employees in various organizations about why they don't speak up (whether to point out potential problems in the business, or to share ideas, etc.) Here is, as they say, the money quote:

Our own and others' research have shown that two beliefs are essential preconditions for the free expression of upward voice: first, the belief that one is not putting oneself at significant risk of personal harm (e.g., embarrassment, loss of material resources) and second, the belief that one is not wasting one's time in speaking up. In short, voice must be seen as both safe and worthwhile.

It's great to see someone sum up the problem so clearly. (If you can't relate, count yourself extremely lucky.) But here's the frightening part:

How do you change a culture of fear? It's difficult! Despite some well-intentioned efforts, we haven't yet worked with an organization that has fully transformed itself from one of fear to one in which most employees would rate the organization as open or conducive to speaking up.

To be fair, Edmondson goes on to say that "pockets" do exist where speaking up is encouraged in many of these organizations. But still, is there no hope for an organization with a closed culture? Is culture so embedded that no effort can crack it?

oh not too much

This is a little late but, if you asked me last week what I did over the weekend, I probably would have told you, "Oh, not too much. Just caught a ferry over to a little Korean island in the Yellow Sea and had barbecued clams and oysters on the beach with a couple new friends from San Francisco and one from Kathmandu."

Not a bad way to spend the day.

And yes, our host, who owns the little beach restaurant, is wearing a San Francisco 49ers cap. I don't think he understood why we were so excited to see him.

digitizing tragedy

At Tuesday night's NetTuesday event here in San Francisco, I learned that there's a "virtual Darfur" in Second Life -- and the fact that the project even exists is very controversial, as you might imagine.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I see it for myself. However, I will say that the screenshot of the busty redhead wearing a "Camp Darfur" T-shirt that the Camp Darfur folks have on their Web site isn't doing them any favors.

censorship in india

Good lord. I've just returned from the conference on international citizen journalism -- at which many of the discussions focused on overcoming government and corporate censorship (both explicit and implicit) -- and the news today is uncannily about government censorship of new media. In particular, Indian Internet service providers are blocking access to blogs at the request of the Indian government.

So the story so far is that the government only asked the ISPs to block a handful of sites, but that the ISPs had no way of blocking select blogspot and typepad sites, so they just banned them all.

In response, a group of Indian bloggers have set up a "Bloggers Against Censorship" wiki to collect and share news about the ban (and ways to get around it.)

So, two wrongs and a right:

• Crackdown on freedom of speech (by a country often referred to as the "world's largest democracy.")
• Terrible, half-assed application of technology to filter content.
• Affected group using the Web to organize, draw attention to the issue, and overcome the ban.

I'm curious to know: Why now? Is there any relation to the recent train bombings?

the panel went well

Greetings from the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul. The conference so far has been quite interesting: a good mix of stories from the people building publications based on user-contributed content; and from the people who are actually creating and submitting that content to these publications -- mainly because it allows them to feel as if they finally have a chance to be heard in an environment where most media outlets tend to ignore their stories.

I thought our panel on the technology underlying the citizen journalism movement went well. You can check out the video online: Citizen Participation and Technology - OhmyNews International.

If you're interested in seeing first-hand what this rise in citizen journalism is all about, check out:

• OhmyNews International (International; in English)
• OhmyNews (Korea; in Korean/Hangul)
• Flix.dk (Denmark; in Danish)
• Scoop.co.il (Israel; in Hebrew)

mr. amit goes to korea

I'll be at the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul this week, moderating a panel featuring Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Ourmedia.org's J.D. Lasica, and Witness's Bryan Nunez. We'll be talking about the technologies that are enabling (or could enable) people all around the world to contribute news, opinions, and stories to media organizations large and small.

I'm only there for about three days, mostly at the conference, but if anyone's got tips on what I absolutely must see or do in Seoul, let me know.

help wanted

In organizations, like in life, people want someone who'll be an advocate for them.

In particular, staff members want their supervisors to champion their ideas. They want to know their bosses believe in their ideas enough to present them to higher-ups. They want someone who'll amplify (but not usurp) those ideas, someone who will stand up for them in the face of skepticism -- someone who'll risk something of his or her own to move a good idea forward.

In other words, they want someone who believes in their causes and will take steps to help. Advocacy.

This is not to say that managers should latch on to every idea that comes out of the group. But I think a lot of managers forget that they're supposed to be advocates for their teams. They think employees exist to work for them.

It should be the other way around. The manager should be working for the employee.